No abstract

Personal hygiene plays an important role in preventing communicable diseases especially in children. In developing countries like India, the burden of communicable diseases is high which makes an awareness program imperative in school children. The objective was to study the outcome of school-based intervention program in promoting personal hygiene among the primary school children of Mumbai and Thane. This is a comparative study carried out from July 2015 to March 2016 between intervention and nonintervention groups before and after intervention. Using random sampling, 119 schools in Mumbai and 24 schools in Thane were selected. Our results suggest that knowledge, attitude, and practices were significantly different in end-line than baseline in the intervention group and had better effects as reflected in scores compared with comparison group. The findings reveal that a health education program clubbed with entertainment and interaction can bring positive attitudinal shift which is otherwise difficult to change.